Famous Basquiat Paintings
Famous Basquiat Paintings
The first was the “Jean-Michel Basquiat” exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art from October 1992 to February 1993. It subsequently traveled to museums in Texas, Iowa, and Alabama from 1993 to 1994. The catalog for this exhibition, edited by Richard Marshall and including several essays of differing styles, was a groundbreaking piece of scholarship into Basquiat’s work and still a major source. Another influential showing was the “Basquiat” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum March–June 2005 (which subsequently traveled to Los Angeles and Houston from 2005 to 2006).
Until 2002, the highest money paid for an original work of Basquiat’s was US$3,302,500, set on November 12, 1998 at Christie’s. On May 14, 2002, Basquiat’s Profit I (a large piece measuring 86.5″/220 cm by 157.5″/400 cm), owned by drummer Lars Ulrich of the heavy metal band Metallica, was set for auction again at Christie’s. It sold for US$5,509,500. The proceedings of the auction are documented in the film Some Kind of Monster.
On November 12, 2008, at another auction at Christie’s, Ulrich sold a 1982 Basquiat piece, Untitled (Boxer), for US$13,522,500 to an anonymous telephone bidder.[28] The record price for a Basquiat painting was made on May 15, 2007, when an untitled Basquiat work from 1981 sold at Sotheby’s in New York for US$14.6 million.
In 1996, seven years after his death, a biopic titled Basquiat was released, directed by Julian Schnabel, with actor Jeffrey Wright playing Basquiat. David Bowie played the part of Andy Warhol. Schnabel purchased the rights to the project after being interviewed, as a personal acquaintance of Basquiat, during its script development and realizing that he could do a better film.
In 1991, poet Kevin Young produced a book, To Repel Ghosts, a compendium of 117 poems relating to Basquiat’s life, individual paintings, and social themes found in the artist’s work. He published a “remix” of the book in 2005.
In 2005, poet M.K. Asante, Jr. published the poem “SAMO,” dedicated to Basquiat, in his book Beautiful. And Ugly Too.
A 2009 documentary film, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, directed by Tamra Davis, was first screened as part of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was shown on the PBS series Independent Lens in 2011.